Election 2010: Who Spent the Most Per Vote?

Election 2010: Who Spent the Most Per Vote?

A GoLocalProv review of the final tallies of campaign spending in the last election has found wide disparities in how much the candidates spent per vote.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Frank Caprio by far ran the costliest campaign, spending slightly more than $36.50 for each of the 78,896 votes he received. At the other extreme, independent candidate for Lieutenant Governor Bob Healey appears to have run the most cost effective campaign, spending just 3 cents for each of the 126,063 votes he garnered. (See below table for the results for each candidate for state office.)

The tallies include only what the candidates spent—not what third parties, such as unions or the two governors associations, put into the election, either for or against a particular candidate. The tallies include all the money a candidate expended in the election cycle.

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Race for governor costs most per vote

The analysis indicates that the race for governor by far is a higher-stakes financial game. Most of the candidates for governor spent at least $20 per vote, with the exception of Republican John Robitaille, whose votes cost a little over $5.33 apiece.

In the down-ballot races, on the other hand, all of the candidates spent well under $10 a vote.

Republicans also emerge as generally more efficient with their dollars than Democrats. Of course, Democrats in most cases won more votes. But higher spending per vote did not always result in a big win for the Democratic candidate. In the race for Secretary of State, Republican Catherine Taylor spent $1.79 for each of her votes—she received almost as many as Democratic incumbent Ralph Mollis, whose votes cost him about $3.08 each. (Unlike Taylor, Mollis also had a primary challenger.)

Chafee ‘had to do more with less’

Mike Trainor, a spokesman for gubernatorial winner Lincoln Chafee, said the campaign had to spend more efficiently because it did not have the advantage of a party structure. “Running as an independent we had to be more efficient. We did not have access to established donor lists, party support, so on and so forth,” Trainor said. “We just had to do more with less.”

Chafee, who invested much of his family’s personal wealth into his campaign, ended up spending $20.42 a vote—less even than Moderate Party candidate Ken Block, whose votes cost $23.79 each.

But Block’s campaign manager, Christine Hunsinger, said he faced an uphill battle just to get voters to recognize his name. “The numbers don’t reflect on face value on the amount of work we had to do,” Hunsinger said.

She said Block went from name recognition that was in the single-digits when he announced his candidacy last February to 65 percent according to a Rasmussen Reports poll close to the election. “I think we got a lot of bang for our buck,” Hunsinger said. “We had a higher and a steeper hill to climb. I think we did that successfully—we did that efficiently.”

While Robitaille also started out with little name recognition, Hunsinger said he had the advantage of an established party brand to boost his votes.

A spokesman for Caprio declined comment and a spokesman for Robitaille did not respond to a request for comment.